Love is for Show

6 - Just the Two of Us

My hand twitches as I stare down the wooden door in front of me. The hesitation is weighing over my confidence right about now. Quite honestly, the last thing I want to do right now is knock on this door. I don't even know what I'm doing here, nor do I understand how he managed to convince me to come here.

Despite my inner turmoil, my heavy hand slowly lifts and raps along the wooden surface a few times before finally lowering to go back to its nervous fidgeting.

"Coming!"

My lungs heave a heavy sigh and before I can inhale another breath, the door opens, revealing a happy Aiden with his freshly colored hair, making it brighter than ever as the light from his windows shines on him from the back. I blink up at him through my dark curls and he gestures for me to enter, which I do a little too quickly.

As soon as I'm through the door, I'm pulled into a hug and we end up staying like this for a few moments. My nose takes in his really familiar scent of pine and berries. The scent alone has memories running through my head at full speed.

After a few silent beats, it starts to feel like our breathing is beginning to sync up. There isn't even an inch of space between us at this point and the fear of him being able to feel my rapid heartbeat is enough for me to start pulling away and he quickly scrambles back with a hand on the nape of his neck.

"Do you want something to drink?"

I shake my head and watch my thumbs go back to their twiddling as I let my eyes scan the unfamiliar place. The fact that it's unfamiliar sends a pain through my heart for a split second, but I quickly shake it off. It's just kind of sad that this is the first time I'm seeing my childhood best friend's apartment...

"We would totally be the best roomies ever whenever we do move into the same place together,"

I throw my head back as I laugh, "we barely started highschool and you're already talking about finding a place together?"

He gasps at me and pauses the show we're not really watching to spin towards me on his knees, his arm resting on the back of the sofa. "Um, excuse me?!" He leans in super close, his eyes bugged and his smile wide. "Of course I am! We are moving in together someday, right?"

I roll my eyes, nudging his arm as I take another handful of over-salted popcorn from the bowl  between us. "What? You just made that decision for the both of us?"

"Well, I just thought it was obvious," he huffs and falls back onto the sofa again.

"Fine, but we better choose a place with the best view of the city,"

His head turns to me again, his smile even wider than before. "I didn't know you cared so much about nice views." His brows furrow a bit and I shrug at him.

"You always look out the window when you paint."

"Okay, I know this is totally random, but I was thinking we could just chill here for the day,"

I look over at him and watch as he stirs his coffee on his kitchen counter. "You just wanna sit in here all day?"

He shrugs at me, his eyes falling back to his coffee before he takes a small sip. "Just like old times, I guess,"

Now that he mentions it, we used to hang around a lot. We would go back and forth between our places depending on which of our parents were fighting the most at the time, and if both were arguing, we would go to the park and laze around on the bench blasting music through our headphones together. Our music tastes were very different, but we really didn't care.